Comments Elsewhere

Bithead: “Because those are the consequences of their choice.”

Look, if I have a gun and I demand, “Your money or your life,” then I’ve established that letting me take all your money is a consequence of declining to get shot to death.

Does that mean that when you (very sensibly) hand your money over to me, I can retrospectively take the fact that you chose an action the consequence of which was my taking all your money, that you consented for me to have all your money? If so, this would be a happy result for muggers: it means that nobody ever gets robbed at all, since everyone “consents” at gunpoint to turn over the loot.

Bithead: “Nor have you, or anyone for that matter, provided me with anything that suggests that those that stayed disagreed with the constitution substantially.”

1. Again, substantial numbers of adults had absolutely no choice whatsoever about whether to stay or to leave. You have still not provided any reason whatsoever to take their presence as evidence of consent to any social contract whatsoever. Nor should you try to provide such a reason: it’s a ridiculous position and you ought to be too embarassed to try to defend it.

2. Of those who did have a recognized legal right to move at their pleasure (basically, adult white males, minus those held under terms of indentured servitude), you still have offered no more reason for presuming that they accepted the Constitution than I’ve given for presuming that you accept my coronation as Emperor of North America. Why should they be under any obligation whatsoever to leave their own homes if they do not agree with the arbitrary demands of a handful of people that they never chose to invest with any authority whatsoever to go around drawing up “social contracts” on their behalf? I don’t need to demonstrate whether they did or did not like the results of the process; if governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and the governed in question were never bloody well asked for their consent, then the government has no just powers over them unless, until, and only so far, as those individual people actually grant them.

If you want to try to defend the Constitution, and the best you can do in favor of this ridiculous fig leaf of “consent” is (1) the will of most of a tiny minority of the population and (2) the failure of the remaining minority that could abandon their own homes in the face of the arbitrary demands imposed on them by (1), then you had better just give up and start arguing for a theory of Divine Right, or the spoils of conquest, or maximization of utility. You’re certainly nowhere near anything that could plausibly be construed as the consent of the governed.